


nothing but the best

by kaijuburgers



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Cunnilingus, Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/M, Grinding, Mass Effect 2, Miranda and Shepard are the Milky Way's T4T Power Couple, Mostly Canon Compliant (with some dialogue shifts), Paragade (Mass Effect), Post Vaginoplasty, Prostate Massage, Sex Toys, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Miranda Lawson, Trans Shepard (Mass Effect), Vaginal Fingering, t4t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26054266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuburgers/pseuds/kaijuburgers
Summary: Commander Shepard is everything Miranda Lawson was prepared for- a competent engineer, a charismatic leader, and sharp as a tack. He’s also plenty that she wasn’t prepared for.
Relationships: Miranda Lawson/Male Shepard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	nothing but the best

Miranda had told Shepard that her father had been the one to design her, and it wasn’t fully untrue. That man had engineered her from the ground up. The strength of her biotics, the depth and breadth of her education, the sharpness of her senses- they had all been the way they were because her father wanted them to be. She’d hated him for it for years; for trying to shape her into a second version of himself, for seeing her as the product of a million different calculations rather than a person on her own terms. Hell, she still hated him for it. But her father hadn’t been the only person who had made her the way she was. There were some things she’d done for herself.

Shepard knew, and it was odd having somebody know. She’d known about him of course- it was public information, his name plastered on a billion different extranet "10 Public Figures You Didn’t Know Were…” lists. The Commander didn’t seem bothered by his status being public knowledge, and Miranda wondered what that was like, to have such a private piece of information so widely known. Even on the SR-2, only Chakwas and Shepard knew, and the former was only because Miranda figured the ship doctor at least should have access to her medical records.

Shepard figured it out by himself, and in hindsight Miranda felt like she should have expected it. He was a smart man, smart enough that he’d become a military engineer with no formal education or training. Sometimes Miranda wondered what he had been like as a teenager, running around metropolis slums unsupervised and feral, learning how to program drones from stolen or discarded tech. She felt like she should have expected that the way she talked about his implants and how they’d improved them when bringing him back- giving him one of those new hormone amplifiers with a VI interface to replace the pellets he’d needed implanting every 2 years- would have seemed too invested to be passed off as being simply knowledgeable. She’d been too opinionated about the merits of different systems- about the benefits and limitations of patches and pellets and theoretical tissue engineering.

The Commander, to his credit, said nothing. Instead, he’d met her gaze with a look of recognition. Miranda remembered how his eyes looked, a dark brown, deep and rich as freshly turned earth. Everything had remained unspoken. Miranda had appreciated it- that even though her choices weren’t the same as his, he’d respected them.

Shepard respected Miranda, but he challenged her too. Always pushing her harder in combat, always pulling more information out of her than she intended, but never pushing too hard or trying to coax more information out of her than she was willing to give. She’d challenged him back, never given him the automatic respect he was used to in the military command chain, always kept pushing him to fight harder, always asking him to rise to another challenge above the last. And he’d always met her expectations. Hell, he always surpassed them.

It infuriated her as much as it delighted her.

Shepard had made no secret of the fact he didn’t trust Cerberus, and Miranda knew she should have written him off as simply a temporary asset that moment. It should have been easy- she’d worked on him for two years, putting him back together, building him up again from flesh and blood and implants. But there was something that made it difficult. Maybe it was seeing his will and drive in action- seeing him dive headfirst into a hail of gunfire, seeing the fearlessness in him. Maybe it was the little acts of softness he thought she didn’t see- finding ingredients for the crew kitchens, putting a pile of blankets in the stairwell under engineering, going with her to Illium when he had no real reason to. She wasn’t sure. And the uncertainty delighted and infuriated her.

After Ilium, Shepard came to her in her cabin with a question.

“With your intelligence you could have landed any job you wanted,” he asked, and there was something in the glint of his eye that made Miranda pretty sure she’d have to keep a close on what she said, or realise later she’d said more than intended. “Why choose this?”

Miranda knew it was intentional, but that didn’t mean the compliment didn’t make the probing question go down smoother. If she’d been a different woman, she might even have blushed.

“Because I still envy the time that Mordin spent with the Special Tasks group, working with people as smart as he was,” she said, hoping the unspoken compliment would work the same magic on him that his did on her. “Cerberus never tells me that something is impossible. They give me the resources and say, do it.” She paused, gave him a brief look up and down, pursing her lips together for just an instant. “And they’ve given you even more. A new life, a new ship, the Illusive Man’s personal attention.”

The Commander raised an eyebrow, the start of a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips. Miranda wondered how many hearts he’d broken with that smirk. “You disapprove?”

Miranda wanted to say yes. She wanted to tell him that he’d disappointed her exactly how she’d expected. She wanted to be able to meet with the Illusive Man and tell him that he should have let her put a control chip in Shepard to make him pliable and useful. But it would have been untruthful. The Commander had been the best case scenario Miranda had prepared for and he had been more.

“I’m just impressed. You’re…well look at you,” Miranda said, and she did. The Commander was tall and broad and held himself with the confidence of somebody who had planned out every encounter in advance. His hair was shaved short, and for a while she’d thought it odd he kept to military regulation. But that was before she’d remembered where he’d come from, that before he was a marine with a shaved head he’d been a punk kid with a shaved head. “You’re a kid from the slums of Earth, no family, little formal education.”

She paused for a moment, turning away from him and towards the cabin window, looking out at where the endless seas of stars and their blues and greens merged, instead of at the way Shepard’s crew uniform hugged his broad shoulders or at the way that his three day stubble made his jawline seem stronger. “And you’ve done more than I could. Despite everything my father did to make me perfect, you’re the best humanity has to offer.”

They must have sounded the same when spoken aloud as they did when she thought them, because Shepard huffed, his voice strained with frustration when he spoke. “Does it always have to come back to your father’s genetic tailoring?”

Miranda could hear his footsteps against the metal cabin floor as he spoke, edging closer towards her. She could have laughed at him and part of her wanted to anyway, wanted to tell him that he was naive if he thought it could ever be about anything else. She’d expected him to be that way to begin with after all. The Hero of Elysium, an undereducated Alliance grunt, good at taking orders and dishing them out, but little else. Even if she’d been surprised by him, that didn’t mean some parts of her initial assessment weren’t accurate. He was still naive if he thought the way her father built her didn’t matter.

“This is what I am Shepard, I can’t hide it. The intelligence, the looks, even the biotics, he paid for all of that” she frowned, and the gesture felt far too vulnerable for comfort, even if he couldn’t see it. “Every one of your accomplishments is due to your skill. The only things I can take credit for are my mistakes.”

Of all the things Shepard could say in response, he laughed. “Wait a minute, are you jealous?”

She turned back towards him with a snap. “That’s absurd.”

“Of course it is,” she knew from his tone that he didn’t believe it, that he was just toying at her. And she hated how easy it was to rile her up. “You’re definitely not jealous of the jumped up kid from Logan City.”

“First, it’s not a competition,” she edged closer to him. “Second, based on your combat records you’re practically a perfect bloody human specimen yourself.”

The Commander raised an eyebrow, and Miranda was suddenly very aware not only of how close the two of them were but of how Shepard was looking at her. Miranda was used to people staring at her- if they weren’t too blatant about it she sometimes even tolerated it. But with Shepard, she found herself wanting him to look at her, wanting his gaze to travel up and down her body and curve around her hips, to see underneath her clothes and caress her without even touching her. There was something dangerous and intense in the way he looked at her- as dangerous and intense as the rest of him- as if he were daring her to ease closer to him.

“Perfect human specimen, huh?” Shepard said, taking a step towards her, his voice low. He was close enough that she could smell his cologne, and the little part of her that wasn’t acting on instinct was quietly bemused that Commander Shepard- military icon, Alliance Marine Corps hero - was wearing cologne while he was on duty. The rest of her noticed how good he smelled, earthy and rich.

“Don’t get cocky, Shepard,” she said, voice just as low as his had been, full of promise as she moved a little closer to him in turn. “I put you back together. And I do damn good work.”

He smirked again, and this time Miranda knew exactly what would happen as a result the moment he did it.

“You certainly do.”

Looking back, Miranda wasn’t sure which of them closed the space between them first. It might have been him, reaching down towards her, one hand on the back of her neck and the other on the small of her back, pulling her closer. It could have been her, hands cupping his face as she pressed herself against him, his stubble rough against the soft skin of her palms. Either way, they kissed, open mouthed and hard, Shepard’s fingers toying with Miranda’s hair as he pulled her closer still. She shivered at the sensation, but it was because of how soft it was rather than how intense it felt to have somebody else touch her skin. For a man who knew so instinctually how to kill, he could have such gentleness in his hands; the whole galaxy disappeared under his touch. And she wanted to make him feel the same way, wanted to gently trace her fingertips down his spine while she pressed into him, wanted to make him forget everything except the two of them here in this cabin.

And then Miranda remembered what a terrible idea this was. Shepard was her assignment. Even if it was easier to forget now than it had been, it was still true. Her mission was to make sure he defeated the Collectors, to see to it that he succeeded, no matter the cost. It was a mistake to kiss him, to let him push his body up against her, run his fingers through the soft curls of her hair, curl his hands around the curves of her hips, to edge just a little closer to him, and then want to edge a little closer still...

She jerked away from him, pulling herself from his arms, and as she took a step to back away from him she realised how flushed she was and how fast her heart was beating. The Commander didn’t attempt to stop her from moving away but he still looked at her the same way, dark and hungry.

“Fuck,” she said, the words coming out too close to a whisper for her to be comfortable with them.“What the hell was that?”

Shepard took half a step closer to her, and despite knowing it would have been the smart thing to do, she couldn’t will herself to move back half a step in response. “It was a kiss, Miss Lawson,” he said, lips and tongue teasing out the syllables of her name. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the concept.”

“I know what kissing is, Shepard. I just,” she paused, hoping if she could find an excuse that sounded half-decent, she might believe it too. “This doesn’t mean anything. We just… God, I need to think. I need…”

He reached forward and brushed a finger against her lips, and she heard a sound that must have been her breath hitching. As he looked into her eyes- steel blue meeting warm brown for what could be a moment or what could be eternity- all she could think about was how much she wanted his mouth on hers.

“Do you?” he purred. “Do you need to think?”

“This is a terrible idea,” Miranda managed to murmur. It was true, and she wished that were enough to stop her. Even beyond him being her assignment, he was too much and too little like her all at once. They were both iron willed and quick witted, but where she had everything to prove and nothing to show for it- a legacy to live up to and nothing but her own mistakes to show for it- he had the opposite. Even in the best circumstances, they’d be a bad match.

“Well,” Shepard said. “At least I’m good at terrible ideas.” He leaned towards her, and Miranda couldn’t think of anything else but how close he was to her, how easy it would be to take just a step forward and touch him.

When Miranda closed the gap between them they kissed again, softly and slowly. Shepard pressed closed lips against hers gently, their noses brushing together despite him tilting his head to one side. It was nothing like the kiss they’d shared before and, Miranda realised with a jolt, she wanted more. She wanted Shepard, and she wanted him to want her the same way. She pulled her lips from his for just an instant and just by an inch, their faces still pressed together. “Not like that. Kiss me like you did earlier.”

He chuckled, and she could feel goosebumps where his warm breath touched her skin. “Yes ma’am.”

He moved her like she was weightless, pushing her against the cabin window with ease. The glass was as cold against her back as his skin was hot against hers, and he kissed her a third time. Miranda tried to find it in herself to not want him to, but she couldn’t. Her heart skipped a beat as his frame leaned against hers, and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer, wanting to feel the heat of his body all over hers. It was soft to begin with, his teeth just brushing against her bottom lip. But the two of them kissed how they fought together, each pushing the other just a little further than before. And just like in battle, Shepard seemed to find nothing but joy in figuring out what she wanted from him and giving it to her, moaning softly into her mouth. 

It was just as easy to forget where they were as it was during that first kiss, and when Shepard moved from Miranda’s lips to her neck it could have been a few fleeting seconds later, or it could have been an hour later. His lips were soft against her neck to begin with, and she grasped the back of his head with one hand, his short hair coarse against her skin. And then he bit down, soft enough that she shouldn’t have reacted but suddenly enough that she felt a moan escape her lips. A moment later, Miranda realised he was toying with the fastenings of her jacket, pulling at the zipper.

“Bastard,” she said breathlessly, but there was no fire in the word.

“Always,” he said back, equally breathless. Miranda was about to deliver a cutting remark back, but then his hands were on her tits and she felt it die in her throat and be reborn as a moan. Her nipples weren’t as sensitive as they were in her first year of having her hormone implant, but in some ways she was grateful for it. If he’d touched her the way he did then back in that first year, she was pretty sure she’d be able to come from that alone. Each time he touched her- placing his palm over her nipples, splaying his fingers out across the rest of her breast- he increased the pressure of his hands, pulling them away before she wanted them to be pulled away. His thigh was pressed between her legs, but the pressure of that was mercifully consistent, pushing firm against her clit in a way that made her helpless to do anything but grind against him.

And then he pulled back. Not enough that his hands left her chest, but enough that she knew something was wrong. “Miranda,” he managed to get out between swollen lips. “My harness. It’s back in the captain’s cabin.”

Part of Miranda wanted to order him to go and fetch it, to tell him to put on the cock she picked out for him and fuck her. Hell, she wanted that so badly it burned, wanted his fingernails digging into her skin as he grasped her thighs to push them back so he could fuck her harder. But even more than that she didn’t want to let him out of her sight, didn’t want to send him away to fetch the harness in case she wised up and changed her mind by the time he got back. So instead she pushed back into him, softly pulling him to grasp her hip with one of her hands, stroking his cheek with the other.

“You’re a smart man,” she purred. “You should know better than to think that’s the only option.” He looked at her for a moment, before she saw a look of understanding light up in his eyes.

Miranda had insisted on a firm mattress being put in her cabin when they’d been fitting and furnishing the new Normandy. It was good for her back, she’d said, to have a firm surface to sleep on. When putting in her request she hadn’t thought about how it would feel to be pushed backwards against that mattress by a soldier made of what seemed like solid muscles. Even though she was very certain he hadn’t pushed her with his full strength, it still knocked the wind out of her, and by the time she recovered he was on top of her, thigh pressed up against her cunt again, one hand caressing her cheek as he kissed her and the other pining both her wrists above her head. He’d lift them the moment she showed hesitation, of course, but it felt good to have his hands there, to feel the firm pressure of his palms around her wrists. He was that kind of leader, always able to read what his people needed and give it to them, sometimes even before they knew they needed it. Miranda could recall more than a few occasions where he’d applied medigel to her before she had realised how badly she’d been injured or given her a ration bar before she’d realised how exhausted using her biotics had made her.

She caught his lip between her teeth, biting down hard enough that she almost drew blood but soft enough that she didn’t and he moaned into her mouth, his hips moving to grind his cock against her thigh the same way she wanted to grind her clit against his. He was wearing too many clothes. Her black jacket was pulled open, exposing her to the waist, but his crew uniform was still fully intact. It was incredibly unfair.

She went for the buckle on his belt first, pressing it open and sliding the loop loose. He got the memo, pulling himself back from her to tug his shirt over his shoulders, slow enough that she knew he was slow on purpose. Shepard had the kind of build that- if Miranda didn’t know better about how his body had been built- she’d have described as being made in the field, not in the gym. Strong, but not cut, broad chested, abdominal muscles strong and thick enough that his hips didn’t seem as wide by comparison. Later, Miranda would wonder if it bothered him that the T-shaped scars on his chest were gone. They weren’t the only scars he’d lost during the Lazarus Project- the small lump of tissue on the back of his right hand, the thin horizontal line on his abdomen, and the small patch in his beard where hair wouldn’t grow were all gone. But the project had given him some in return, a series of thin white lines along his cheekbone and across his brow, healing but not fading. When Shepard stood up to pull his boots and cargo pants off, she took the opportunity to slip the rest of her clothes off too, piling them onto the cabin floor.

“Lube?” he asked, and hell if he wasn’t handsome. Strong thighs, a light dusting of dark hair all over his body.

“Side cabinet,” she answered breathlessly, and he laughed as he spoke, the tone of his voice teasing but not cruel.

“Planning on something were we?”

She flushed, and then laughed, despite herself. “No. Bastard. It’s for my vibrator.”

“That in the side cabinet too?”

His hands felt as good on her thighs as she’d imagined them feeling, newly clipped nails sharp as he dragged them along her skin, the pressure of his palms strong and steady when he grasped them. And his hands felt even better when they teased at the folds of her cunt, slick with lube. Miranda was not the kind of woman who begged, but right then- with him there between her legs, his mouth just out of reach of hers- she wished she was. Instead she moaned, unable to look at anything except Shepard’s kiss-swollen lips and the smirk he wore on them, unable to think about anything except how close he was to her and how much even that short distance felt like too much.

“Forward or back?” he asked, voice like a whisper breath hot against her skin. It took her a moment to realise what he was asking.

“Forward. They moved it.”

When he finally, mercifully put his fingers inside her he turned them towards her belly, curling the tips in gentle circles against the knot of her prostate through the wall of her cunt. Miranda could feel her leg muscles twitch, her hair pooling and messy underneath her as she turned her head into the mattress. And that was before he took her clit into his mouth for an instant, her back arching up from the mattress as she gave a low throaty groan. The pressure of his tongue was almost too much around her, but it was still a disappointment when he pulled away. Or at least it was before he moved his mouth to the rest of her, tracing his tongue along the length of her lips, gently tugging at her with his lips. He was teasing, Miranda knew it, and she loved it. One of her hands found its way to cup the back of his head and she found she barely noticed the roughness of it as he moved back to her clit. He still teased, flicking his tongue around her clit in an O-shape, keeping the constant steady pressure of his fingertips against her prostate, and she knew if he moved his mouth from the sides of her clit to its head, it would be almost enough to bring her over the edge. Almost enough.

“Shepard, my vibrator,” her voice was shaky and needy and in any other situation Miranda would be ashamed of it. But she wanted Shepard too much to care. “I want to use my vibrator.” He looked up at her from where he lay flat on the bed, face and hand buried in her cunt, and pulled his face away. His whole face was wet, his forehead glistening with a thin sheen of sweat and his mouth and nose covered in the lube, and when he spoke, he was almost as incoherent as her. It took Miranda a second or two to realise he was trying to tell her the wand was next to her, and the moment she reached for it, moving her hand from Shepard’s head to press its buttons, he moved his mouth back to her. Even when she pressed the wand head up against her clit, first to one side of her clitoral hood and then to the other, his fingertips still pressed up against that spot inside her and his mouth was still on her labia, licking and tugging and flicking.

The vibrator had been a personal self indulgence, bought during shore leave on the Citadel at the start of their mission. The shop assistant had suggested that model, pointed out the deep purr of the motor, told her it used miniature mass effect fields to make sure the vibrations were rumbly and deep reaching. Miranda had bought it expecting to use it just on its own, and even by itself the vibrations were sometimes too much for her to bear. In combination with the way Shepard was touching her- steady pressure against her prostate and an ever shifting sensation of his mouth on her- it was far, far too much. She could feel the pressure building, her muscles tightening, and she clawed at the bedsheets. He was pushing her, teasing her as far as he could until she reached her breaking point.

_Oh fuck. Oh fuck. He’s going to make me come._

When Miranda came- back arching against the mattress, clenching around Shepard’s fingers- he had to pin her legs down with an elbow to avoid being crushed between her thighs. It was all consuming; her hips arching, a chorus of unbidden groans and moans escaping from her lips. For a while she forgot everything except how good it felt.

That was until she looked down the bed and saw Shepard still lying between her legs, his mouth and chin slick with lube, looking up at her with an expression of absolute awe, as if she were a statue of a goddess come to life. Miranda couldn’t recall a single time in her life when somebody had looked at her like that. It wasn’t the way that somebody looked at a one night stand they’d just been blowing off steam with. And from the warmth in Miranda’s chest, heavy and overflowing, she was certain that she was looking back at him in exactly the same way.

“Oh,” she said, head still heavy and clouded but not heavy and clouded enough that the weight of their mission didn’t come flooding back to her. “Oh shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> I want to give a huge thanks to my transfem sensitivity readers for their time and feedback. While I am trans, I'm a trans man, and I don't want to perpetuate transmisogyny and/or misrepresent my trans sisters in my work. I also want to thank my beta reader Nate for his feedback (which I used for the updated version of this fic).
> 
> This is the first smut fic I've written in years, and it was super fun! Maybe went a bit further than I expected with length, and that's even before we get into the fact I really like Miranda's dynamic with this Shepard and want to write more of them. I've always headcanoned Miranda as a trans woman, and I'm really surprised it took me this long to think of pairing her with a trans m!Shep


End file.
